


It's Just Fantasy

by battyandtrick



Category: Fall Out Boy
Genre: M/M, MCD/OBCD, Other minor characters - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-01
Updated: 2014-09-01
Packaged: 2018-02-15 18:10:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,642
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2238522
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/battyandtrick/pseuds/battyandtrick
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There's so much that can change if you give it twenty years.<br/>Then again, there's some things that just never change.</p>
            </blockquote>





	It's Just Fantasy

They start when Patrick is six.

Suddenly, Patrick doesn’t have to play in the sandbox alone anymore, piling sand over his shoes and hands, and then picking them up and watching as the sand threads through the spaces between his fingers and back into the sandbox. He doesn’t have to shake his head and say, “No, thanks,” when the other kids ask him if he wants to play pirates, not on their free will, but because the teachers told them to.  Now, he’s figured how to venture into the other world in his head.

He has a friend there. He’s nice to talk to, doesn’t say much but nods in all the right places, smiles when Patrick says something funny, and just looks, dark eyes twinkling, when he needs to. He’s Patrick’s best friend. Patrick likes him, no loves him, in that way friends do. Patrick learns that sometimes, being the better friend means listening, not talking. It’s a good lesson, and if it has anything to do with Patrick’s general silence, nobody mentions it.

_“Wha’s yer name,?” Patrick asks one day. He and his friend can hear it, but it’s in Patrick’s head. The girl sitting next to him continues making lopsided o’s on her piece of paper, having heard nothing._

_“Fantasian,” Patrick’s friend replies, and smiles. Patrick nods, rolling it over in his head. He decides that he likes it; it sounds like something a superhero would be named._

They’re innocent, little things that keep Patrick busy.

_Fantasian licks melted ice cream off his palms, and smiles, laughing, and Patrick just laughs back, licking his own palms._

_“It’s sticky,” Patrick tells Fantasian, and Fantasian just looks at him, eyes happy and glittering, and nods._

_Fantasian lines up Patrick’s stuffed animals, all twenty-four of them, in order by height. When he’s finished, he taps Patrick on the shoulder. Patrick takes one interested glance over the line and grins. Fantasian grins back._

To the outside world, and Patrick’s brother sitting right next to him, it looks like nothing.

Patrick’s parents don’t mind, they just think it’s better to have him quiet on the couch than screaming and jumping around.

“All children have imaginary friends,” Patrick’s mother says one night when Patrick’s aunt is over.

Patrick’s aunt just sighs. “Not like this they don’t.”

Six year old Patrick thinks nothing of it, glancing up at his aunt curiously and then peeling the cheese off his pizza, dangling it in front of his mouth, and finally dropping it into his mouth.

“Don’t eat like that, Patrick, that’s messy,” his mom scolds. Patrick just stares at her in that way that six year olds do, the look that means 'you’re obviously wrong, I do what I want.'

 

When Patrick is nine, the school nurse calls his mother because he’s been spending too much time looking 'sedated and out of focus.She says Patrick’s symptoms may be psychotic and recommends he see a psychiatrist. Patrick waits in the school office for an hour and a half, which he thinks is stupid, because the office is for kids who are in trouble, before his mom can pick him up.

“What did you do wrong?” a skinny, light-haired kid asks him while he’s waiting. Patrick ignores him and frowns at the floor, rolling his eyes. The kid stares at him for another minute before shrugging and walking off into the nurse’s office. Patrick is left wondering if maybe he is in trouble.

His mother picks him up, a little earlier than expected, along with his brother, and takes them out for pancakes.

“Mom?” Patrick asks in the car, and she turns to look at him. “What does psychotic mean?”

Patrick’s mom sighs and starts the car. “It means you think things are real when they aren’t,” she explains, and Patrick smiles wistfully at her and stares out the window.

“It’s okay,” Patrick says, “I know Fantasian’s not real.” His mother says nothing.

Patrick goes to the psychiatrist anyways, and spends most of his time in the waiting room, kicking his legs back and forth and getting lost in his other world. His mother touches his thigh gently and gives him a stern look. Patrick heaves a defiant sigh, rolls his eyes, and kicks his legs harder.

His behavior earns him ten minutes of sitting on the stairs when he gets home, but his mother doesn’t make him go back for a follow-up appointment.

_“You got me in trouble,” Patrick tells Fantasian later, while Patrick’s getting ready for bed._

_“Sorry,” Fantasian replies, those big brown eyes staring at Patrick through the mirror under the bright false light of the bathroom. He’s not sorry at all._

_Patrick gives him a smile that’s almost mean, spits out his toothpaste. “It’s okay,” but it’s not really._

The school, however, isn’t satisfied, and Patrick spends an increasing amount of time on the bench in the office for not paying attention. His teachers aren’t happy, so neither is his mother, and Patrick is awarded some time with the Special Education teacher, who is filling in as a school psychologist. He hates it.

“Why don’t you pay attention in class?” Special Ed lady asks softly.

Patrick blows his hair out of his face and frumpily spits out an explanation. “It’s better in my head.”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s nice in there. I’ve got a friend?”

And that is how he meets Joe.

Joe is nice enough, Patrick thinks. His hair is kind of distracting, especially when he’s leaning over to scribble down something on the worksheet they’re assigned to in class. Patrick makes a face and wonders just how much of Joe’s hair got up his nose.

At lunch, Joe drags Patrick over to sit with Joe’s friends, instead of all alone as usual. Joe introduces him to all his friends, but the only kid that really sticks in Patrick’s mind is Andy, who spends most of lunch watching the other kids with an interested expression.

However happy Patrick is to have a friend, he still finds Joe annoying sometimes. It’s not Joe as a whole, it’s his little quirks, the way he reorganizes the colored pencils in the box every time Patrick puts them back, or the way he’s kind of bossy; he always gets to have the first pick at characters when they’re playing Ninja Turtles with Andy and a few other kids at recess.

Patrick decides not to complain. Joe’s more fun to play video games with than his brother is, but no one’s more fun than Fantasian.

 

At twelve, Patrick decides to invite Fantasian to his birthday party. He writes up the invite along with the others but doesn’t give it to his mother to mail, instead mailing it in the postbox on the way to school.

A week later, at his birthday party, Patrick blows out his candles and wishes for Fantasian to be real. He opens his presents and thanks his friends and thinks that he’d give it all back for a day to spend with a real-world Fantasian.

It gets worse, Patrick’s almost desperate longing for a best friend, or even more the friends; the kids at school have started talking about crushes and dating and even whispered mentions of sex, which turns more kids red than it excites.

_“So,” Fantasian says. They’re sitting on the back wall of Patrick’s yard, watermelon dripping down his fingers and trickling down his arms to his elbows. “Got any girls you want to tell me about?” Patrick watches the juice slide down Fantasian’s forearm and shakes his head silently._

_But Fantasian, the press he always is, tries again. He leans forward, almost in Patrick’s face, and grins. “Boys?” he asks coyly, though Patrick doesn’t know it._

_Patrick shakes his head again and pointedly does not look at Fantasian or his mouth for the rest of the afternoon._

He tries not to act down in front of his mother, certain that he’ll get sent back to the Special Ed lady, and begins inviting the few friends he’s collected over the years over more and more to try to rid the ache.

At school, Patrick focuses more on his work than he ever has, only because the extra-credit homework is a suitable distraction from Fantasian. His grades get better and his mother praises him for it, brags about it to her friends, shows him off and sends his school work to relatives. Patrick is glad she’s happy, but he wonders if she’d still be happy if she knew that Fantasian stuck around.

He tells Andy about it, just to get it off his chest, and feels better for it. Andy’s a good listener, nods in the right places and never interrupts.

“You know he’s not real, right?” Andy asks when Patrick has finished explaining.

Patrick nods. “Yeah. I just wish he was, you know?”

“Yeah,” Andy says, laughing softly. “He sounds cool.”

“I’m glad you like him,” and that is that.

Shopping with his mother, Patrick carefully keeps an eye out for anybody that has Fantasian’s bright eyes and coarse black hair, but finds no one acceptable. He’s quiet in the car, thinking, and jumps when his mother touches his arm. He’s finally old enough to ride in the front seat, and takes advantage of it whenever possible, but right now, he’d kind of rather be in the back.

“Are you okay?” his mother asks, and Patrick smiles and nods vigorously.

“I’m good,” Patrick lies, still smiling.

His mother frowns. “You seem down lately,” she ponders, and the smile disappears off Patrick’s face just like that.

“I’m fine,” he says. “Really, Mom.”

Except that he isn’t, not really, but he can pretend, and Patrick’s mother doesn’t press any further.

 

The first time Patrick jerks off thinking of Fantasian, he’s fifteen. It’s practically the result of pure boredom.

He’s listening to his brother watch some stupid TV show Patrick refuses to watch in the other room and waiting for his mom to get home and make dinner, so he pops the buttons on his jeans, telling himself that he’ll get up and do his homework in a minute and pretty soon he’s got a hand down his pants.

Patrick is trying to train his brain to think of the half-naked girl in the lingerie magazine his brother had mooched off a friend for five bucks, but just by his luck, Patrick’s mind wanders to Fantasian’s dark eyes and his too-white smile, and suddenly, things are ten times as intense and Patrick may or may not be in Kansas anymore.

_Fantasian just stares at him, pants around his ankles, and gives Patrick that look that makes heat blossom in his chest, and smirks._

_Patrick tries hard to steady his shaking hands when Fantasian steps to him and places his own hands on Patrick’s hips, gentle and kind, but still intimidating._

_“I’m waiting,” Fantasian says out loud, mocking-like, and Patrick shudders, his whole body going hot. “I know you want to kiss me.”_

_So Patrick does._

When he’s done, Patrick wipes his hands on some shirt he finds on the floor, does up his pants, and goes to do his algebra homework, that dreaded feeling of 'oh god,the guilt,' and 'oh god, the _pleasure_ ;' combined that can’t be described as anything else.

Geometry really isn’t sexy. Patrick is secretly glad.

“Patrick?” his mother calls from downstairs not five minutes later, and for a split second, Patrick is worried that his mother somehow has some sort of telepathic communication with him, which would really explain so much, but then his brother comes barging in, tossing the aforementioned magazine onto Patrick’s bed and mumbling something about dinner, and Patrick completely forgets about both Fantasian and the lingerie magazine in pursuit of dinner.

It’s three days later when Patrick wakes up sticky. He blearily scrubs at his eyes and sits up, covers pooling at his waist, and thinks that a shower might be in order.

“Oh fuck, fucking really,” is all Patrick has to say to the subject. He frantically scrambles for any recollection of his obviously hot and dirty dreams, but when he comes up with nothing, Patrick just throws his soiled underwear in the back of his closet and makes a mental note to apologize to his brother for waking him up with the shower water.

“Since when do you shower in the mornings?” Patrick’s mother asks casually, placing a plate of toast in front of him. Patrick just stares up at her and shrugs.

“Since when do you shower at all?” Patrick’s brother asks in the same casual tone, and just to be daring, Patrick stretches his hands over his head and gives his brother a Look.

“Maybe because I want to smell nice. Maybe because I’m going to ask a girl out today.”

“Well, that’s very nice,” Patrick’s mother says, and Patrick just nods. He can feel his brother staring at him, can feel the 'you’re lying,' he’s sending Patrick’s way. “I hope that goes well for you.”

“Mmm,” is all Patrick replies with; he really needs to leave now, before his mom decides to press any farther, because he hasn’t prepared his speech this far, or before his brother just decides to out him then and there. He leaves the toast untouched on the table.

“I’m honestly surprised you got that past Mom,” Kevin tells him on the way to school.

Patrick swallows the lump in his throat and spends the first half hour of school biting back tears in the boy’s bathroom. He gets detention for being late, tells his mother he was at Joe’s when she asks why he came home late that afternoon, and blames it on hormones.

  
  


A week before college classes start, Patrick has a heart to heart in his head with Fantasian in the third aisle of Staples and finally admits that he feels better for it.

_“I think I like you,” Patrick says._

_Next to him, Fantasian grins wickedly, his smile taking up most of his face and reaching his eyes. “I think I like you, too.”_

_Patrick blushes and stares at his orange sneakers. “I think I really like you.”_

_“I think I really like you, too.” Fantasian steps back, gives Patrick space to get more words out, but the words he’s looking for don’t come out and Fantasian pretends that he hasn’t been discouraged._

_Patrick notices, of course. “It’s not you,” he tells Fantasian wistfully. “It’s not me, either. I just- I don’t.” Fantasian nods, just to shut Patrick up and takes another step back._

He doesn’t realize he’s been talking aloud until he snaps back into focus and sees the odd looks the cashier is sending him. She gives him a smile that was probably supposed to be understanding but looks more wary, and Patrick blushes crimson, drops the things he had been planning on purchasing and quickly leaves without buying anything.

Later, he tells his mother over the phone that he still doesn’t know exactly what he needs, knowing that she’ll just buy whatever he needs for him, and sure enough, three days later, he has his things and never has to step another foot in Staples for at least ten years.

On the first day of classes, Patrick takes a seat in the back of class and raises his hand  when the professor calls roll call. There’s one kid absent, he should have been sitting next to Patrick, and his name is something stupid, normal, not anything Patrick pays attention to or thinks about.

Patrick goes back to his apartment, where he spends the rest of the day with Fantasian. He makes them both dinner, goes to bed with a smile on his face, and wakes up with his boxers stuck to his thighs and the warm feeling of a body laying sprawled over him, soft sleepy breaths in his ear.

Patrick takes a cold shower and skips breakfast.

He arrives to class two minutes later and quietly makes his way to the seat he has sat in next in yesterday, but when he gets there, there’s already someone sitting there.

And then the kid in Patrick’s seat looks up. Patrick chokes.

The kid, all skinny frame, shaggy bangs hanging in his wide brown eyes, shadowed by black eyeliner, and smattering of tattoos that may or may be quite legal, looks as shocked as Patrick feels.

Patrick can’t breathe, just stares as the kid stares back, and then Patrick’s shock loosens into pure joy and then loops back up into butterflies as Patrick continues to stare, because the kid is far too familiar and also drop-dead _gorgeous, Jesus._

Patrick watches, not aware of the professor watching them warily, assessing eyes flitting over them every once in a while. The kid’s eyes narrow, as if he’s considering, and then the kid stands abruptly from the chair, grabs Patrick’s wrist, and drags Patrick out of the classroom and into the hallway.

“I know you,” the kid says, right in Patrick’s face, and almost accusing, and Patrick can tell he’s panicking, face paling more every second eyes wider than usual and frantic.

Patrick attempts a smile, gives a pathetic, embarrassed laugh, and begins to feel panicked as well. “Yeah, I know you, too.”

It clicks into place for Patrick, right then.

It takes a moment for the kid to get it, too, color slowly returning to his face and turning into a blush barely visible.

“Oh,” he says. His eyes glance from Patrick’s mouth back up to meet his eyes and he gently touches Patrick’s elbow, tongue running nervously along his upper lip. “Okay, I’m just gonna-”

And then his mouth is on Patrick’s, hot and wet and soft, and Patrick stands there for a moment before the gears start turning again and he’s got one hand on the kid’s sharp hips and the other looped loosely around his neck.

They both know not to push it, not in the hallway, but by the time they break apart, Patrick’s mouth is redder than usual and he has the kid’s cell number in his back pocket. The kid had slipped it in there himself, only stopping to casually grope a handful of Patrick’s ass.

 

The rest is history though, after the hallway, midnight stars on chilly January nights, slow love on Sunday mornings, legs tangled under the starch-white sheets, pools and grilled veggies on hot July noontimes, cuddles on the couch on rainy Monday mornings, long walks with the dogs and bright leaves at their feet on pleasant October evenings, and filthy make-out sessions in the back alley of clubs on Friday nights, forgotten friends still dancing inside.

There’s the slide of the glass screen door, too, the creak of the bed when Patrick shifts during the night to get just that much closer, dog toenails clicking on hardwood floors and zippers on suitcases.

There’s happy tears when there’s good news, and sad ones when there’s only bad, arms to hold each other in, and hands and voices to soothe.

There’s Patrick and then there’s Fantasian, too, warm and solid next to Patrick on the train or standing in the doorway or in bed, sleepy smiles exchanged and cozy cuddles slipping into sleep, smiles still just there peeking out from under the sunny yellow bedspread and pale sheets.

 

Another four years and they’re standing in the middle of the path leading up the Patrick’s mother’s house. There’s a ring on Patrick’s left hand, not a wedding band, just a promise for later, someday, when someone can ask, “Eight years?” incredulously, and Patrick can look them straight in the face, “Forever,” and no one will think twice about it. It’s pretty plain, flat and silver, but it means more to Patrick than he thinks. His right hand grazes the cool metal absentmindedly as he shifts the bag on his left arm to his right and stares up at the man standing in front of him, still all of sharp hips and wide smiles, chocolate eyes that show too much and a personality that would knock some people to the floor, all large hands stuffed into small pockets and larger tattooed arms.

The man in front of Patrick makes a face when Patrick mentions his brother and Patrick sighs, rolls his eyes.

“Pete,” Patrick says. “Stop that,” and the man in front of Patrick looks down at Patrick and swallows, expression falling soft and worrying his bottom lip.

“Come here,” Patrick tells him, setting the bag he’s been toting around onto the stones, and reaches up to cup the man’s face in his hands, get his mouth on that too-big smile just one more time before Patrick’s mother calls them in to eat supper.

It’s warm, oddly warm for the usually ill-mannered March season, and Patrick slips his hands around the man’s shoulders to pull off his dark hoodie, still exchanging languid kisses. The man lets Patrick slip the hoodie of his body and then his hands wander, tracing down Patrick’s sides, mouth parting enough to let Patrick slip his tongue inside, slow like Sunday mornings. Patrick runs his fingers through the man’s hair, feeling the coarse strands slip through his hands, and carefully stands up on his tiptoes, just enough to break the kiss and drop his forehead to the man’s cheek.

“You’re beautiful, Fantasian,” Patrick says, voice soft but honest.

“It’s Pete,” the man says, almost laughing, dark eyes glittering. His hand slides around to hold Patrick between his arms and Patrick goes limp, hanging off the man’s shoulders, eyes falling closed on their own accord and fingers roaming, stuck into the man’s back pockets.

“I know,” Patrick whispers, “and I think I still love you.”

“I know I love you,” the man says, louder than Patrick had, and on the stone pathway, Patrick kisses the neck of the man he loves and grins.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Whoop, so Fantasian was an alternate Pete, if you didn't pick up on that.  
> Please tell me if there are any errors or revisions to be made in the comments, it really helps me out a lot.


End file.
